“Ein wenig besser würd er leben, Hätt’st Dur ihm nicht den Schein des Himmelslichts gegeben;
Er nennt’s Vernunft, und braucht’s allein Nur thierischer als jedes Thier zu seyn.”
Besides the terminology of the historical fiction this curious passage shows in the strongest light the struggle by which Rousseau passed from the position of the “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” to that of the “_Contrat Social_.” The “hedging” of the sentence, “Although he deprives himself,” etc., represents a loathing of the decadent society of his day, which was deep-seated in Rousseau’s mind, and which his life enables us thoroughly to understand. The son of a Genevese artisan, with a touch of vagabond impulses, and more than a touch of Wordsworthian genius, he was the first, perhaps, of great modern writers to feel the true democratic passion, [1] and to see his artificial age as Plato or as Ruskin might { 99} have seen it. It was no small feat of insight to subdue his just repugnance so far as to estimate, in the language of the chapter before us, the use, as distinct from the abuse, of law and society.
[1] Note the sentence in Émile, “C’est le peuple qui compose le genre humain; ce qui n’est pas peuple est si peu de chose que ce n’est pas la peine de le compter.” (Bk. iv., 3rd maxim.)
As a feature of this conflict of ideas, we may observe more especially the notion of original individual right, ascribed to a condition of man in which, according to the previous paragraph, right could not exist. The phrase is merely taken up from previous writers, as is also the so-called “right of the first occupant.” And the antithesis with true right and property, recognised by the social mind, in which this chapter presents them, has the effect of a destructive analysis of these uncritical conceptions. [1]
[1] Rousseau’s brilliant criticism, bk. I., ch. iii., has finally destroyed the conception of a right, whether natural or social, founded merely on force.
True right, then, begins with that social unity “by which a people is a people,” figured by Rousseau under the image of the social compact. This unity is one aspect of the rule of reason, the sense of duty, and the essence of humanity. The quality of man is liberty, [1] and we here see that this fundamental principle which Rousseau has above laid down in an undetermined sense, must, in the course of his reasoning, take on the higher meaning demanded by the conceptions of this chapter.